Daniel Ganz: Handwerk der Landschaftsarchitektur

Craftsmanship is something pleasurable. Good craftsmanship is an expression of skill and value. It encompasses knowledge, experience, and passion. For craftsmanship, it is important to know the material. By knowing and recognizing the material, we understand what we are doing. Doing something with passion means getting involved and dedicating yourself unconditionally to a task. Landscape architecture works with change and does not define anything, does not insist on fixed positions, but explores the dynamics of directions. We like to idealize nature and ignore its changes. The craft of landscape architecture means understanding the duality of nature, the conflict between idyll and natural forces, vegetation and human nature, and the contrast between nature and culture.

Landscape architect Daniel Ganz founded his office in Zurich in 1995. Today, he and his seven employees carry out projects in the areas of gardens, landscapes, squares, courtyards, and garden monument preservation. Ganz Landscape Architects are guided by images, art and history serving as their inspiration. In their work, they practice shifting their gaze from far to near and vice versa, capturing atmospheres and perceiving moods, organizing and classifying, comparing and distinguishing. In addition to his work as a landscape architect, Daniel Ganz also teaches. Among other things, he has been a visiting professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), a guest lecturer at KIT in Karlsruhe, and a lecturer at ETH Zurich in Tom Emerson's studio. Daniel Ganz is a passionate collector, cook, and gardener.

Part of the IKA Lecture Series Winter 2025: Hands on — Urban Landscape Practices in Europe
Curated by Thilo Folkerts and Christina Condak

As practitioners, the ways we act in and with urban space is undergoing critical revision. While our cities are in multiple crisis, the parameters of what forms the city are dynamic, the urban landscape is essentially fluid, as is nature itself. In recent decades standards in planning and building have had to be challenged. Learning while doing, using tools of participation and collaboration, working with experts of other fields, as well as hands-on engagement with the site and the future project are gaining importance as ways of finding agency. The lecture series focuses on European landscape architecture and urbanistic practices, adjoining critical and theoretical voices for contextualization and speculation on future acting.

Further lectures:

atelier le balto (D / Berlin) 24.11.2025 

Sarah Cowles, Ruderal (GRG / Tbilissi) 01.12. 2025 

Françoise Fromonot (F / Paris) 12.01.2026 

Matthew Gandy : 03.11.2025 (Otto Wagner Lecture 2025)